Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral

The Mediaeval Collection

Head: Jasna Ujčić Grudenić, curator

The nucleus of today’s Mediaeval Collection was formed at the end of the 1960s. The collection is being greatly supplemented with systematic field – research work, particularly in the region of Vinodol. The collection consists of 588 museum items which have all been inventoried and registered in a computer database. The dominant material in the collection is from the old Croatian necropolis of Vinodol (jewellery and parts of costumes, everyday items, items of bone and horn, weapons) which from an archaeological–historical aspect pass far beyond the local boundaries.
The storeroom is located in the attic spaces of the museum, the material is regularly viewed and preventive measures of protection are carried out. Conservation-restoration procedures are performed in specialised laboratories.
The importance of this inventory is based on the establishing the continuity of the settlement of the Croats, the cultural layers, and above all the multiculturalism expressed in the distinctive holding of material culture. The diversity and richness of the cultural inventory of the collection at the same time also testifies to the economic power of this population which established obvious contacts with the wider European surroundings.
The properties of the cultural assets are sublimated into insights which refer to the clear cultural links that connect this area and are greatly involved in the corpus of the Early Mediaeval Croatian state and testify exactly to the material and spiritual culture of the littoral in the atmosphere of Croatia’s Early Middle Ages.